How Global Networks Are Reshaping Startup Success

Angela Strange's international investing strategy at A16Z grew from early fintech work and observing underserved markets outside the US. Her brother joining Nubank in Brazil revealed Latin America as a wide-open opportunity, where five large banks served only 20 percent of the population. The first check she wrote at A16Z went to Santiago Suarez, CEO of Adi, which now serves a quarter of the Colombian population for banking and payments. Strange argues the strongest Latin American founders typically grew up in their home markets, spent time in the US absorbing American business models, then returned with deep local knowledge. Unlike in the US, those founders cannot access fraud-as-a-service or KYC-as-a-service and must build those capabilities themselves, creating a different kind of operational depth.

Gabriel Vasquez mapped Latin America when there were only 30 unicorns in the region and found that Brazilian, Colombian, and Mexican unicorn founders were not talking to each other. He and Strange created a WhatsApp group connecting those founders with A16Z partners including Marc Andreessen and Alex Rampel, and the founders quickly began exchanging deal flow given how active they were as angel investors. They also organized borderless dinners hosting 20 to 30 founders per event, with early attendees including Guillermo Rauch from Vercel and Pedro Franceschi from Brex serving as mentors. Founders who attended early sessions, including Victor Cardenas from Slash, later became unicorn founders and returned as speakers.

Vasquez describes AI as creating a dichotomy where the technology distributes globally but the fastest-moving epicenter concentrates in the Bay Area. This has caused international founders to want to come to Silicon Valley and integrate faster rather than waiting for investors to visit their home countries. Once in the Valley, those founders map top talent from their home country already present there, benefiting from shared cultural affinity and what Vasquez calls Silicon Valley's culture of giving. Visa navigation is described as the most stressful part of relocation, which led the fund to invest in a visa company called Extraordinary to help founders qualify and move quickly. No one who visited Silicon Valley reported it was a waste of time, and the primary ongoing advantage the Valley holds is the speed at which people operate, with a recommended minimum stay of three to six months to build meaningful network depth.

Diaspora founders building globally benefit their home ecosystems by creating talent flows back to their countries of origin. Adi used its brand dominance in Colombia to attract credit talent from Capital One in Virginia, where candidates preferred joining a clear market winner. Taco, a Brazilian payroll and HR workflow company, recruited Brazilians back from the US who understood local bureaucratic problems. Cognition used Brazil as an early go-to-market and Brazil represented a high share of its early revenue because enterprises there were eager to adopt AI and had fewer providers to choose from. Landing a large bank or insurance company in another country via a borderless network is described as accelerating enterprise sales in the US by providing reference customers.

Government support can function as a validation stamp that accelerates enterprise customer acquisition. The Polish government invested in 11 Labs, which has Polish founders and started in the UK, and is conducting initiatives with the company. The Swedish government has similarly supported Lovable and Gora. Jeeves is working with the central bank in Brazil to help corporations move money internationally via stablecoins and is building a reputation as a trusted compliance-focused provider.

Vasquez uses the term local luminaries to describe highly respected individuals in local ecosystems who work to make their ecosystem viable regardless of the scale of their own company. Fredrik Jelm, co-founder of scooter company Voi, made angel investments in nearly all relevant companies coming out of Sweden. Gabriel Peterson, a Swedish high school dropout who became one of the youngest researchers at OpenAI before starting a company, is cited as a key connector for Swedish founders moving to Silicon Valley. The fund's first step in entering a new geography is identifying and supporting local luminaries, including by validating their message and helping their companies recruit. Repeat founders in local ecosystems typically had first outcomes in the one billion to five billion dollar range and are motivated to build something larger the second time. The fund invested in Frederic Guillaume's new company pit.com and arranged introductions to former executives from DoorDash and Lyft before the founders finalized their vision.

Forty percent of the fund's investments are in international founders, split evenly between those based in the US and those based elsewhere. The claim that 90 percent of venture capital returns come from Silicon Valley companies is described as incomplete because many borderless founders have engineering teams in their home countries and are claimed by multiple ecosystems. The speakers predict the share of venture returns coming from non-Silicon Valley companies could grow from 10 percent to 20 or 30 percent, and that the trend toward international and borderless founders building larger companies will continue as AI remains largely untapped.